Water Pollution News

PURWOKERTO, Indonesia — This January, the people of Karangtengah Village in Central Java were surprised to find that the river running past their homes had turned murky. Not only do…

ALAOTRA-MANGORO, Madagascar — Mines, legal or not, are born, die, and spring back to life all over Madagascar. It has been this way since the 1990s. Some become famous, such…

Scientists have discovered the first entirely cave-dwelling armored catfish of the Callichthyidae family in South America. But big human pressures around its restricted habitat mean it may already be highly…

"The Santan River is the lifeblood of the people of Santan Ilir, Santan Tengah and Santan Hulu villages,” said student activist Taufik Inskander (26), sitting on the veranda of his…

During 74 days in late 2009, a leak in the Montara offshore drilling platform gushed tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Timor Sea, a body of water…

JAKARTA — Six weeks after the last of the Bukit Duri evictees moved into their new dwellings here in the Indonesian capital, the atmosphere was friendly but painful. Some tenants…

CUNINICO, Peru - Whenever there's a cloudburst, the sidewalk that serves as the main thoroughfare in this small Kukama Indian village is lined with plastic buckets and basins to catch…

For thousands of years Sabah’s magnificent 560-kilometer-long (about 348-mile-long) Kinabatangan River has wound its way down from the hills of Borneo’s northern interior through some of the planet’s richest lowland…

An oil spill was detected on the Teles Pires River, a major tributary of the Tapajós River in a remote part of the Amazon Basin on Sunday, November 13th. The…

Nearly one year ago, on November 5, 2015, a mining waste dam failed at the Samarco iron mine in rural Brazil, unleashing an enormous torrent of chemical-laden sludge into the…

When a dam burst and released mining waste into the countryside of Minas Gerais, Brazil, in November 2015, the toxic tailings also polluted the main channel of the 800-kilometer river.…

Simon Pakarati recalled how as a child he used to fish with hooks that would constantly get stuck on the rocks off the shore of Easter Island (Rapa Nui, as…

The price of oil controls much of what happens in Venezuela, determining the nation’s economic health, policies and politics. In 1995, when that price fell to just 16 dollars per…

Northern La Paz - Fifteen years ago, ex-miner Pedro Espinoza decided to leave behind gold mining and go to live in the middle of a forest in the Yiquimuni area,…

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Along the northern coast of South America the small nation of Guyana sits nestled roughly south of Venezuela and north of Brazil. Referred to as the “Lost Land…

Driving down a winding road here in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, one finally arrives at the sweeping vista of Lake Toba. Ringed with pine-studded hills, the volcanic lake was thronged…

One of the world's major salmon-producing regions has been hit by an environmental crisis. In early May, an unprecedented fish kill struck the archipelago of Chiloé, located in southern Chile.…

t’s a diver’s bane: beautiful and interesting sites, but low visibility. This year, Indonesia’s anomalously wet dry season overlapped its stormy rain season. Yet, while Jakarta proper was inundated, the…

It's 7 p.m. in the bay of Quintero, Valparaiso Province. With cuttlefish, hooks, coffee and food at the ready, the crew releases the moorings and sets out into the night…

tanding on a damaged oil pipeline deep in the Peruvian Amazon that separates polluted water from clean, a worried Gilter Yuyarima Tapuyima fretted over the weather. “The raining season will…